A PLEA FOR HASTE IN MAKING DOCUMENTARY 

 RECORDS OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 



By Edward S. Curtis 



M 



R. CHARLES DAWSON, in dis- 

 covering the " Sussex Man "and 

 accompanying flints, aroused 

 the whole civiHzed world and with 

 the skull restored, scientists the world 

 over began to make their deductions. 

 Even with their learned conclusions 

 before us however, it is a tax upon 

 the imagination to form a picture of the 

 "Sussex Man" as he lived the hypothe- 

 tical four hundred and fifty thousand 

 years ago. With concentration we gaze 

 upon the skull, touch the flints and try 

 to force our minds back into the hazy 

 dawn of life, expressed only in geological 

 terms — Miocene, Pliocene and Pleisto- 

 cene. We try but with little success to 

 form a picture of the " Sussex Man," of his 

 mate, his children, his home — a literal 

 picture of the people and of the environ- 

 ment where they wandered contem- 

 porary with the strange animals of those 

 remote geological periods. 



What is true of man in his earlier types 

 applies to all anthropological records. 

 We value the skull, the skeleton, the 

 artifacts, the clothing; but beyond 

 these we want the documentary picture 

 of the people and their home-land — a 

 picture that will show the soul of the 

 people. In the study of primitive man 

 the interest is more in his psychology 

 than in his economics, more in his songs 

 and prayers than in his implements. 

 In fact, we study his implements that 

 we may get light upon his mental 

 processes. 



I desire to add 'my plea to that of 

 others for prompt work by all of those 

 who would gather first-hand knowledge 

 from the North American Indian. Many 

 take issue with the thought that the 



Indian is a "vanishing race." As far 

 as the ethnologist is concerned, this race 

 is not only vanishing but has almost 

 vanished. We are now working late 

 in the afternoon of the last day. Each 

 month some old patriarch dies and with 

 him goes a store of knowledge and there 

 is nothing to take its place. Each year 

 the change in the life is more noticeable 

 and the gathering of material more 

 difficult. What is to be done in the 

 field as far as original research is con- 

 cerned must be done in the next few 

 years. 



In gathering the lore of the Indian one 

 hears only of yesterday. His thoughts 

 are no longer of the present for to- 

 day is but a living death and the hope- 

 lessness of to-morrow permeates his very 

 being. If the narrator is nearing the 

 end of his days, he lives over and over 

 again the life when his tribe as a tribe 

 flourished — the time when his people 

 were truly monarchs; if he is a young 

 man and a true Indian, he is a living 

 regret that he is not of the time of 

 the supremacy of his people — when to 

 be an Indian was to be a man. 



We have all heard voiced many times 

 that the greatest blot upon the history 

 of the United States is our treatment of 

 the Indian. Having spent a good part 

 of my working lifetime around the camp 

 and council fire, I can only say like the 

 Indian, "Aj'e! Aye!" to this. Yet our 

 strong sympathy for the Indian must not 

 blind us to the fact that the change that 

 has come has been necessitated by the 

 expansion of the white population and 

 for once at least Nature's laws have been 

 the cause of a grievous wrong. No one 

 will deny however that the inevitable 



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